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This has obscured some of the possible original meanings: some have argued that—as "Jim" was a generic name for slaves in minstrel songs—the song's "Jim" was the same person as its blackface narrator: Speaking about himself in the 3rd person or repeating his new masters' commands in apostrophe, he has no concern with his demotion to a field ...
It has been argued that the rhyme is derived from an Aramaic (Jewish) hymn Chad Gadya (lit., "One Young Goat") in Sepher Haggadah, first printed in 1590; but although this is an early cumulative tale that may have inspired the form, the lyrics bear little relationship. [3]
In the UK the rhyme was first recorded in Songs for the Nursery, published in London in 1805. This version differed beyond the number twelve, with the lyrics: Thirteen, fourteen, draw the curtain, Fifteen sixteen, the maid's in the kitchen, Seventeen, eighteen, she's in waiting, Nineteen, twenty, my stomach's empty. [1]
The instability of the early recorded lyrics has not prevented considerable speculation about the meaning of the rhyme. A medieval date had been argued for the rhyme on the grounds that the bells worn on the lady's toes refer to the fashion of wearing bells on the end of shoes in the fifteenth century, but given their absence from so many early versions, this identification is speculative. [2]
Other interpretations exist. Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey note in Birds Britannica that the greylag goose has for millennia been associated with fertility, that "goose" still has a sexual meaning in British culture, and that the nursery rhyme preserves these sexual overtones ("In my lady's chamber"). [7] "
The lyrics of the poem go as follows: [7] It's raining, it's pouring, The old man is snoring, ... the rhyme is an interpretation of an accidental death. [7] References
Avery wondered if he would abandon music for something else. During Jane’s, a family friend once told him that many great artists leave their first form for another. It was natural.
This is very close to the earliest printed version in 1805. A version published in John Bell's, Rhymes of Northern Bards (1812) gives these additional verses: Bobby Shafto's tall and slim, He always dressed so neat and trim; The ladies they all kick at him, Bonny Bobby Shafto. Bobby Shafto's gettin' a bairn, For to dangle on his arm;